Researchers, scientists and professionals who are somehow involved in research, need to develop an ability to detect ethical problems. But we also need to learn how to do something about them. – How can we learn?
The Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics (CRB) has developed a web-based training in research ethics. And now we are looking forward to a pedagogic challenge!
Research ethics is not only following rules and regulations. It is also about training your ethical competence. We have decided to use a new approach: a web based training that requires commitment from both teacher and student.
We emphasize interactivity. Research ethics is about learning from history and understanding how norms affect what we do. But research ethics is also about reflecting on your own attitudes and actions. This is why we believe that talking with others is important. We have added e-meetings to the training where we give every participant opportunities to discuss research ethical problems. In addition, every lesson has a theme and we use chatrooms to discuss related cases.
Last term we tested this concept on participants from Europe, Egypt and Singapore. Now it is time to launch our training and open it for participants from all over the world. Our aim is high: We want to offer the most complete, updated end enjoyable training you can imagine!
Online distance training has some advantages in itself: It is flexible for the student, relatively cheap and there are good opportunities to have individual support for your studies. Add the possibilities that a modern, digital learning environment can offer: video films that can be interactive, e-meetings, quizzes, TED lectures, discussions in chat rooms and more offer opportunities for both variety and having fun, learning and reflection on several different platforms. Sites that allow users to try randomizing participants in a study can create a greater understanding of how it is done rather than just reading about it. We collect all these resources in one place for students to reach whenever they want. This way, the focus is on students learning instead of teaching.
Having students from different backgrounds adds strength to the training, but it is also a challenge. An important aspect is to try and capture the different experiences and circumstances they bring to the course. Coming from different cultural environments, they will meet different challenges when they try to implement an ethical stance in their work. Participants can learn a lot from each other and increase their understanding of the conditions that other’s work under. But positions and traditions can also seem difficult to understand, or hard to put forth to others.
Distance learning risks creating a situation where some participants are unable to take responsibility for their studies and hesitate to ask for help. Creating a positive, allowing atmosphere is not something that can be realized through the design of tasks or user interfaces (although those things matter too). It is something that you convey by the way to act towards others. There is a challenge for the teacher here: trying not to inhibit the student’s activities, or ending up on the outside of the group’s dynamic and development.
As a teacher, you soon realize that you have to work hard on both content and form. A difficulty is balancing the student’s freedom to plan the work to fit a schedule (that is probably quite busy already), with the aim to have interactive parts of the training that everyone has to be there for: both in time and progress. During the pilot it became obvious that students found it hard to follow the common time plan.
In the end, when people from different places can meet each other in a learning environment, exciting opportunities present themselves. One course can mix traditional teaching with different pedagogic models and technology. The challenge lies in finding a balance between the focus the training needs and the freedom that is so appreciated, and between structure and the endless pedagogic possibilities that this format offers. For the teacher, the task becomes to organize and guide students on the different paths that move them along in their individual learning processes. A challenge that I find both enjoyable and important!
Want to try it? Go to www.ethicstraining.crb.uu.se
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